“Three Zombifieds and one Vampire Bite,” he announced, placing orange-colored drinks and a blood-red concoction on the bar.
I didn’t have to ask which one was mine. I frowned at Veronica, who raised her fleur-de-lis–shaped cup in a toast, and wished I’d gone home as planned.
“Look, Miss Carnie.” Glenda pointed at the TV. “It’s that handsome hunk of man meat, Detective Sullivan.”
Carnie licked her Lucille Ball lips. “Gurrrl, you know I’d like to take a bite of that beefsteak.”
I dosed myself with my drink and glowered at the screen. The superintendent of police and the chief were on either side of the podium, and Detective Wesley Sullivan was right where he liked to be—front and center. I knew because I’d made the mistake of getting in the way of his glory while working on Carnie’s case. And because his ego was as inflated as his biceps, he’d done everything he could to sideline me, starting with throwing me in jail.
I made eye contact with the bartender, who poured a daiquiri from one of the machines. “Could you turn up the sound, please?”
“F’sure.”
Veronica looked at the TV. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll bet it’s about the blood bank, Miss Ronnie.” Glenda held her straw like a cigarette holder.
The cold, red liquid I’d sipped took on a ghastly chill in my mouth. I held it there for a second and then swallowed, hard. “Blood bank?”
The bartender aimed a remote control at the TV, and the murmur of reporters chatting in the background became audible.
“As you may know,” Detective Sullivan said, quieting the crowd, “last night there was an attempt to break in to The Blood Center on Canal Street at eleven forty-five p.m. We believe the culprit or culprits were scared away by officers responding to an unrelated call near the scene.”
“Send those officers my way, Detective. I don’t scare easily.” Glenda arched her back to emphasize her sex, not her strength.
Detective Sullivan shot a somber look at the camera, matching my mood exactly. “The security camera outside the building was disabled. Fortunately, a security camera across the street captured an image of a suspect, who we’ll show to you now.”
Video footage of a caped figure aired.
“A cape?” I was dumbstruck—and disturbed. “A guy goes to steal blood from a blood bank and wears a cape?”
Veronica shrugged. “Who said it was a guy?”
“Um, the point is the cape?” I glanced around the bar, surprised that no one else was freaked out by the suspect’s choice of outerwear. “It’s awfully vampiric, don’t you think?”
Veronica bit her straw and turned away.
“It’s too much clothing.” Glenda scowled at the screen. “The public doesn’t want to see that.”
“And capes are out of style,” Carnie chimed. “They need to put the camera back on that delicious detective.”
Detective Sullivan reappeared, and Glenda and Carnie clinked cups.
“If you know this individual, or if you have any information about the break-in, you can call us at the number on the screen.” He read from a sheet of paper on the podium. “If you’d rather remain anonymous, you can call Crime Stoppers, send them a text, or leave a tip online.”
“What about your phone number, Detective?” Glenda cooed.
As Sullivan left the podium, a young male reporter appeared on screen. “Do you have any active leads?”
The detective looked annoyed. “We’re following up on some tips, but at this time we do not have a suspect.” He nodded at the gathering of reporters. “Yes, Bill.”
An older man stepped forward with a notebook. “Do you have any reason to believe this attempt is related to the break-in at the Metairie blood bank last month?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.” The detective pointed to someone off camera. “Ann?”
“Do you have any idea what the motive would be for stealing blood?” she asked.
The superintendent leaned into the microphone. “I’m afraid we’re out of time. This concludes the press conference.”
I glanced at Veronica. “The superintendant skirted that question, didn't he?”
“Yeah.” She sat on the stool next to me. “I wonder why.”
“I’m not sure I want to know.” I reached for my Vampire Bite but then decided to leave it be. “Had you heard about the break-in at the Metairie blood bank?”
“M-hm.” Her pretty pout thinned. “They wiped out their entire supply of B Positive.”
My blood type. I scratched my neck. “Bizarre.”
Glenda plucked a few feathers from her breast area. “Stranger things have happened in New Orleans, sugar.”
After a year and a half in the city, I knew that was true. “But why would anyone steal blood? And only one type?”
“I say it’s a fetish.” Glenda pulled a cigarette holder from the heel of her stripper shoe. “When I was dancing at Madame Moiselle’s back in the ‘90s, we had this VIP room regular we called The Podiatrist. He took pictures of our feet with a Polaroid.” She laughed and slapped my leg. “Then he rubbed the pictures between our toes before putting them in individually marked plastic baggies.”
I pulled Veronica’s drink from her grip and took a gulp.
Carnie, nonplussed by The Podiatrist, leaned back on her barstool. “Maybe it’s a wounded criminal in hiding.”
A mobster or a drug lord was a possibility—one I didn’t want to consider.
Veronica twisted her ring, staring into space. “Or maybe it’s for voodoo or witchcraft.”
That was my cue to leave, or rather, flee.
“Whatever the reason, I’m glad it’s Detective Sullivan’s problem and not mine.” I hopped from the barstool and, without thinking, chugged the rest of my Vampire Bite. And when I put the glass on the bar, I had a bitter taste in mouth, but not because it reminded me of blood.
It was because something told me that I’d jinxed myself and that the blood bank problem was about to be mine.
I awoke, shivering. The temperature in my bedroom had dropped at least ten degrees since I’d gone to bed. Too exhausted to open my eyes, I rolled onto my back and reached for the hot pink velvet duvet, pulling it over the sheets. Then I waited to drift back to sleep.
A blast of hot air hit my neck.
And another.
In my semiconscious state, I realized the blasts were coming in rhythmic bursts.
Like breathing.
In a flash I was alert, frozen with fear. It was ludicrous to think of vampires and blood bank thieves, but I did.
As well as deranged drag queens.
I couldn’t get my gun, because it was in the nightstand. My only option for taking on the intruder was the self-defense training I’d received during my year on the Austin PD.
Corralling my courage, I opened my eyelids a crack. And the blood drained from my body.
A hairy face hovered at my throat.
Was it a big bat? A werewolf? An unshaven Carnie?
The creature’s mouth opened, as though in slow motion, revealing pointed teeth and emitting a putrid odor.
The smell of death.
I whimpered, and it…barked?
My body went limp.
The creature was my Cairn terrier, Napoleon.
“Bad boy,” I shouted, supine. But I was madder at myself than at my dog. I didn’t know what had gotten into me—all I knew was that I wanted it to get out.
He barked again.
“Ugh.” I raised my head. “What do you want?”
In reply, he jumped off the bed and trotted to the doorway. Then he turned and looked over his shoulder.
“This had better be important business.” As soon as I’d said it, I thought of Bradley’s trip, and then I was doubly annoyed.
I dragged myself from the black bordello-style bed and grabbed my gut. I’d been in a bad state before hitting the sack, so I’d gone out with a bang—an alligator sausage Dat Dog and crawfish étouff
ée fries topped off with a quarter jar of Nutella. The problem was that the alligator and the crawfish sought revenge, swimming in the muddy swamp of my stomach.
Lumbering Bride-of-Frankenstein-style through the living room, I reached the front door and peered through the peephole. Satisfied it was safe, I opened the door. “Shake your tail fur.”
Napoleon darted into the yard, and I lost sight of him in the darkness. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was after two a.m. because the lights were off at Thibodeaux’s tavern across the street.
A cat howled from the cemetery next to the bar, and Napoleon growled.
“Stay,” I commanded, although I still couldn’t see him. “You go in there, and you’re on your own.”
The ghoulish graveyard had been the bane of my existence ever since Veronica had talked me into renting the apartment next door to hers on the first floor of Glenda’s fourplex. Because I lived in Austin at the time, my best friend had mailed me the lease. And she’d stayed as mum as a corpse about the macabre tombs, crypts, and mausoleums across the street. Otherwise, I would’ve run for my life. Even the locals knew how disturbing their aboveground cemeteries were, which is why they’d nicknamed them cities of the dead.
And, as far as I was concerned, there was nothing uplifting about living by the dead, especially in one of Glenda’s apartments. Veronica described the décor as bordello chic, which was fitting since Glenda had furnished the place from brothel fire sales, but it also had a disturbing funeral parlor feel. When the day came that I could afford to move out, I was going to write a book about the experience—The Little Whorehouse of Horrors.
The cat started caterwauling, and I heard my Cairn “terror” tear across the grass to save the cemetery from the feline infiltrator.
“Damn dog never listens to a word I say,” I muttered, slipping on my soccer sandals.
The alligator and the crawfish switched from the freestyle to the butterfly the second I set off for the cemetery. When I got to the gate, I cursed whoever had left it open. The musty scent of decay assailed my nostrils, and I covered my nose and mouth. There was no way to know whether the odor was from the damp earth and thick carpet of dead leaves—or from something else.
“Napoleon! Come. Here. Right. Now.”
Nothing.
As I debated whether to enter, a gargoyle glared at me from atop a tomb. Gritting my teeth, I took a step forward and stopped.
The leaves were rustling—a lot.
“That’s a big cat,” I said to the gargoyle, shifting my weight to the other foot. “Like, lion-sized.”
A hiss sounded, and a yelping Napoleon dashed past me with his tail between his legs.
I cracked a smile at his cowardice and glanced in the area of the cat commotion.
And what I saw scared the smile from my face.
Moving among the mausoleums was a caped figure—like the one on the press conference video.
Following Napoleon’s lead, I turned tail and ran to the apartment in Olympic time.
After checking on Napoleon, who was holed up beneath the zebra-striped chaise lounge, I peeked through the gold fringe of my drapes.
There was no one in sight, but I wasn’t about to relax because I finally understood why I’d been so spooked. I’d lived in New Orleans long enough to know that people and things were connected in this city in ways they weren’t anywhere else. In unthinkable and unknowable ways.
The vampire, the press conference, the caped figure—the uneasy feelings they’d given me had been no accident. One way or another, they’d come back to haunt me during Halloween.
2
My phone alarm went off, and I sat straight up in bed, knocking heads of garlic to the floor. It seemed silly in retrospect, but since I’d had the garlic in the house, I’d surrounded myself with it in case the caped creeper came in. It wasn’t that I really believed in the supernatural, but when faced with something spooky like a suspected vampire, my standard operating procedure was to play it safe rather than sorry until I had all the evidence in hand.
After gathering up the garlic, I stumbled to my automatic coffeemaker. As I stood at the kitchen counter stirring the black brew into a half-cup of Baileys Crème Brulée coffee creamer, Napoleon pressed a paw to my foot.
“You want breakfast, do you?” I grabbed his bowl and gave him a glare while dishing up his dog food. “You know what I want? A Cairn terrier who doesn’t live up to his breed name.” I placed his kibble on the leopard-print linoleum. “So the cemetery excursions stop today, feline foe or no.”
Swallowing some coffee, I scooped up my phone and returned to my room to get ready to meet Bradley. I should’ve been looking forward to our date, but part of me wanted to cancel, and it wasn’t because I was pouting about the trip. After the previous day’s events, my instincts were telling me to get back in bed—and pull the covers over my head.
I stepped into the bathroom and onto something foreign. “What the—?”
My behind hit the floor and the coffee went flying—all over my one clean dress I’d hung in the doorway before going to bed.
So much for listening to my instincts.
Sprawled on my back, I lifted my head to see what had caused me to slip. There beside the pink claw-foot tub was the culprit—a bulb of garlic.
“Seriously?” I put my head down.
My ringtone sounded.
Thinking it was Bradley, I reached for my phone and tapped answer as I pulled myself to my feet. “Hello?”
“It’s your mother, dear.”
“Yeah. Hi, Mom.” I resented the implication that I didn’t talk to her enough to recognize her voice. “Listen, I’m getting ready to meet Bradley. Can I call you tonight?”
“This is important, Francesca.” Her typically shrill tone had turned snippy. “And Bradley can wait on you for once. After all, you’ve been waiting on him to propose for almost two years.”
I exchanged a look with myself in the oval-shaped mirror of the red Louis XVI vanity. When was I going to learn to screen my calls? “What’s going on?”
“Anthony quit the deli.”
Maybe that was why I’d been getting the vampire vibe. My older brother Anthony had been sucking the lifeblood from my parents since the day he was born. At thirty-two, he was still living at their home in Houston and, until recently, “shirking” (a more applicable word than “working”) at their business, Amato’s Deli. “Wow. What’s he going to do for money?”
She sighed a lifetime of exasperation. “That’s what I’m calling to talk to you about.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I didn’t like the sound of another receiver picking up even more.
“Ciao, Franki,” my nonna said in her thick Sicilian accent. “You got a ring-a yet?”
I returned to my sprawling position on the floor. A combined call from my martyr mom and matchmaker grandma carried the physical impact of a one-two punch. “No, Nonna. Bradley hasn’t popped the question.”
“But you steal-a the lemon six-a months ago,” she protested. “If you ask-a me, that-a Bradley is-a the lemon.”
“She’s right, Francesca,” my mother singsonged. “When we were there in March, I told him all about the tradition—a single woman steals a lemon from a St. Joseph’s Day altar, and within a year she’s engaged.”
The reference to the cockamamie Italian-American custom and my unwilling participation in it curdled the creamer in my stomach. There would be no lemonade made from this batch of lemons. “Right. So he still has six months to propose.”
“Your Nonna and I think you need to move on. At thirty, your eggs are already old,” she reminded in her ticking-time-clock tone. “You can’t afford to put them all in Bradley’s basket.”
I stood up and mouthed “help me” in the mirror. Only my mother could take an innocent idiom and turn it into an insulting indictment against my reproductive system.
“What about that handsome detective we met at your house?” she trilled.
&nb
sp; My reflection and I rolled our eyes. What did everyone see in Sullivan? “Just so we’re clear, I’m staying with Bradley. And even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t date the detective.”
“What’s-a wrong-a with you?” Nonna yelled. “He gave-a you a five-a dollar bill-a.”
Bradley had given me a ruby and diamond necklace for my birthday, but my mom and Nonna were placing their bets on a man who’d tipped me five bucks when I’d performed a striptease to crack a case. “Getting me married is not a family project, okay? I can find a husband for myself.”
“You haven’t found one so far.” My mother stated the painfully obvious.
I watched the corners of my mouth leap to their deaths. “Can we get to the news about Anthony, please?”
She snorted, as though I were the one being rude. “He’s decided he wants to work in the hospitality industry.”
I almost hit the floor again—this time from laughter.
“What’s so funny?” The snippiness had resurfaced.
“Mom, Anthony doesn’t greet customers when they come into the deli—he grunts at them. So how the hell is he going to work in hospitality?”
“Francesca Lucia Amato!” She went from snippy to snarly. “You watch your language, young lady.”
That was my mother. When it came to having kids I was verging on menopausal, but when it came to anything else I was forever a child. “Fine. But even you have to admit your son is severely lacking in people skills.”
“I most certainly do not,” she snapped. “Anthony can be very charming.”
“Sì.” Nonna cackled. “Like-a the ass of a bull-a.”
“Go ahead. Make fun, you two,” Mom shouted above our snickers. “But it’s all settled. Your father has given him his blessing to move to New Orleans.”
I choked on a chuckle. “Who?” I whispered, hoping I’d misunderstood. “Who did Dad give his blessing to?”
“Anthony,” she replied. “It’s a tourist city, and you know we have connections there.”
There was no way I could forget. My nonna and nonnu had emigrated from Sicily to New Orleans where they’d raised my dad and his four brothers. And ever since I’d set foot in the city, my nonna had been trying to set me up with her Sicilian friends’ sons, grandsons, nephews, neighbors, and assorted acquaintances—some of the saddest suitors in the South. “But Houston has tons of tourists. Why come here?”
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